Cal vs. Stanford: 10 Little-Known Facts About the Big Game

This Saturday, the 10th oldest rivalry in the nation, the Big Game, is taking place in Palo Alto, Calif.

This year's Big Game will mark the 114th game played between Bay Area rivals, the Stanford Cardinal (9-1) and the California Golden Bears (6-4).

In last season's matchup, the Cardinal destroyed the Bears 48-14 behind quarterback Andrew Luck and returned to Palo Alto with The Axe, the trophy the two teams play for.

Luck is back for Stanford and the Cardinal will look to keep The Axe in Palo Alto for consecutive years for the first time since their streak of seven straight wins from 1995 to 2001.

Let's take a look at some of the history between the two rivals.

Cal and Stanford played against each other for the first time in 1892, in which Stanford won 14-10.

The two teams have played almost every year since then, with the exception of three breaks.

The first came from 1915 to 1917 when Cal was playing football but Stanford was playing rugby.

The second was in 1918 and there just simply wasn't a game held because of eligibility issues.

The third and final break came during World War II and the Big Game was put on hold from 1943 to 1945. Ever since 1946, Stanford and Cal have played each other every year.

Great players such as Jim Plunkett, John Elway, John Lynch, Toby Gerhart, Joe Roth, Chuck Muncie, Aaron Rodgers, and DeSean Jackson have suited up for the Big Game.

The Stanford Cardinal hold an all-time 56-46-11 record over the California Golden Bears.

This includes all of the games between 1906 and 1914 when the two schools played rugby against each other rather than football.

After the 1904 season, both Cal and Stanford decided to switch from the sport of football to rugby. They continued to play rugby from the years of 1905 to 1914.

During the rugby years, the record stood at 5-3-1 with Stanford holding the advantage.

The two schools continue to battle in rugby to this day in a matchup for the Scrum Axe.

The Stanford Axe is the trophy that is awarded to the winner of the Big Game.

It was first unveiled in 1899 by Stanford and was used to destroy a man made out of blue and gold straw. But very shortly after, some Cal students stole it.

For 31 years, it stayed in Berkeley until Stanford was able to steal it back during Cal's 1930 Axe Rally. Twenty-one Stanford students put together an elaborate plan to get their axe back and succeeded.

Over the next year, university officials decided to make The Axe the trophy awarded after the Big Game.

In 1933, Stanford won the first Axe by beating Cal 7-3.

The most points ever scored by either team in the Big Game was 48, something accomplished twice, once by each team.

Last year, Stanford did it to Cal in its 48-14 victory at Memorial Stadium. It was highlighted by quarterback Andrew Luck's 58-yard run where he plowed over Cal safety Sean Cattouse.

The first time a team reached 48 points was in 1975 when running back Chuck Muncie (pictured, with the San Diego Chargers) powered Cal and its top-ranked offense in the nation to a 48-15 win. Cal had five All-Americans on offense that year, and Muncie led the way with 169 rushing yards, three rushing touchdowns, one receiving touchdown and a passing touchdown.

Obviously, The Play isn't a little-known fact about the Cal-Stanford rivalry.

But how can you have a slideshow about the rivalry without including its most famous moment?

The Play occurred in the 85th Big Game in 1982. On the final play of the game, madness ensued as Cal returned a kickoff for a touchdown thanks to multiple laterals and by running through the Stanford band.

Cal beat John Elway's Cardinal 25-20.

One of the key members of The Play, Cal's Richard Rodgers, currently the defensive coordinator at Holy Cross, has a son who now plays for the Bears. Richard Rodgers, Jr. is a freshman tight end.

In 1986, Cal upset Stanford in arguably the biggest upset in Big Game history.

Cal came in 1-9 and had just announced that head coach Joe Kapp would not return as coach next season. The Golden Bears hadn't scored an offensive touchdown in over a month and their starting quarterback had never played before.

Stanford, on the other hand, was ranked No. 16 and, with a record of 7-2, was on its way to the Gator Bowl.

But Cal won—17-11.

Senior starter Kevin Brown passed for 212 yards and completed 65 percent of his passes. The lone start of his senior year was certainly a memorable one.

Stanford has produced three of the best college quarterbacks in the history of the game: Jim Plunkett, John Elway and Andrew Luck.

However, despite being such elite quarterbacks, the three never dominated the Big Game. Take a look at their records against Cal.

Jim Plunkett, 1970 Heisman winner and first overall pick in 1971 NFL Draft, 2-1

John Elway, first overall pick in 1983 NFL Draft, 1-3 

Andrew Luck, 2011 Heisman favorite and consensus first overall pick in 2012 NFL Draft, 1-1

That gives the three of them a 4-5 all-time record against the Bears.

Luck will be playing in his final Big Game of his Stanford career on Saturday and has a chance to go out with a winning record against Cal. 

On October 17, 1998, five members of Cal's Theta Chi Fraternity stole the Stanford Tree from the Stanford Band Shak.

After Stanford's first basketball practice of the season, the five members of the fraternity's Mu Chapter stole the Tree and took it back to Berkeley.

They had no ill-intent by stealing the Tree and only did so as a joke. They released "letters" to Cal's student newspaper The Daily Californian written by the Tree saying it didn't like Stanford anymore and preferred Berkeley but would return to Palo Alto before the Big Game.

Cal administrators threatened to not have Oski at anymore football games. And $5,000 was offered to have the Tree returned. But "The Phoenix Five," as the five men decided to go by, wouldn't give up the Tree on any terms but their own.

Eventually it was returned to the chancellor's office but not after being paraded around on KTVU Channel 2 in the parking lot of an empty school in Oakland.

The Tree was then shredded by Stanford Band at halftime of their game versus USC because of "contamination."

The Phoenix Five have gone down in Cal and college football history has having succeeded in one of the greatest mascot thefts ever.

The 1970 Big Game had some very interesting story lines to it.

Jim Plunkett (pictured, with the Oakland Raiders) was Stanford's Heisman candidate that year, an award he won after the season, but Stanford was upset by Cal, 22-14.

A player who was a key component to Cal's win was kicker Ray Wersching. Wersching later went on to kick four field goals for the 1981-1982 San Francisco 49ers in Super Bowl XVI. The 49ers won the game 26-21.

And the coach of that 1981-1982 Niners team? Bill Walsh. He coached Stanford from 1977-1978 and again from 1992-1994.

This year, quarterback Andrew Luck is the favorite to win the Heisman. Also, former Stanford coach Jim Harbaugh is in his first year as head coach of the Niners. Does that mean Cal will pull away with a win and Bears' kicker Giorgio Tavecchio is destined to kick his way to a Niners Super Bowl title?

We'll just have to wait and see.